Nonstop Running

The move from Tianjin to Harbin was incredibly hectic and I'm very relieved that it's over with. Our bus from Tianjin to the Beijing airport had us leaving at 3:30am, so we all decided that the best idea would be to rent a couple extra hourly rooms in the modern high rise that Justin lives in - furnished rooms in it can be rented monthly or on apparently much shorter terms. So when our rooms were available at about 10, we decided to split up to get some rest. For myself and Justin especially, some shut eye was much needed from our 5am antics at KTV and Soul Bar. After a few hours of fitful sleep, we woke up a little early for our 2am checkout and made it to the bus stop by 3:15 to see our (fully occupied) bus driving away without us. The bus company had a few extra vans for this situation, so we still made it to the airport. At the airport, I had to split from the rest of the group to catch my own flight (the other flight was fully booked) at another terminal and left like an hour or something before the flight Justin, Keith, John, and Rosemary were taking. My new friends Raymond and Sophie were staying in Tianjin, but Robert would be taking another flight later in the day.

I made it to Harbin well enough, although was presented with a long queue of passengers attempting to board an escalator to the baggage claim. To the right of that escalator was an empty staircase with a nice long banister for sliding. On a whim, I chose the latter approach and ended up shattering the side of the 20 foot long protective barrier that the airport had installed next to the handrail to keep toddlers from falling off it. I turned around to see if anybody noticed. The entire queue of escalator passengers ranged from horrified to amused; it was like a needle had come off and scratched a record and everyone was staring. No police noticed, but the place has cameras all over the place. I quickly decided that I had to get out of there as fast as possible, with the chance of getting in trouble for destroying airport/government property incredibly frightening. Even walking through the airport to baggage claim, I was unbearably uncomfortable. I was the only westerner at the airport, so I stuck out like a sore thumb. My bag was the fourth to come out of the baggage claim, I promptly bailed from the airport but not entirely sure if I was in trouble or not. I texted the phone number I thought was Justin (it later turned out to be Robert) and he said he wasn't departing until 11am. It was 9:30 already and a 2 hour flight. Instead of standing around outside in the cold for 4 hours, I could go back inside and wait for someone to spot the white guy who destroyed federal property (fat chance) or I could bail via taxi to the nearest restaurant and camp out there. Another option, I could have gone back inside to the airport in search of an English-speaking person to explain the handrail thing to, but the threat of getting detained sent me packing.

After a few hours of waiting at KFC, Justin and I cleared up the miscommunications with wrong phone numbers and I was able to catch a cab to the hostel after hailing them for about 15 minutes. I met up with the rest of the team, and we spent the rest of the day exploring downtown Harbin. I'll send some pictures of that over later.

By 7pm, I was ready for bed. I couldn't sleep much on the bus or the plane, so climbing into a nice warm and soft bed was like a trip to heaven. I just woke up from a long sleep and am going to shower up and make my way to the lobby to watch some of the super bowl in a bit, and then we'll be off to see some Siberian tigers. Hopefully I can manage to stay out of trouble and away from banisters.